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Rainstorms Bring Scant Relief To Stricken Texas, Oklahoma

May 27, 1996|By Richard Wronski.

AMARILLO, TEXAS — Weekend rainstorms brought some relief to the bone-dry Panhandle areas of Texas and Oklahoma but were not strong enough to end one of the worst droughts of this century, officials said Sunday.

Scattered storms dumped 6-to-10 inches of rain on areas of northwest Texas and western Oklahoma Saturday and early Sunday.

But while the rains may help corn and cotton crops, experts said they came too late to prevent a disaster for wheat farmers and that much of the rain simply ran off the baked soil.

Rainfall across much of Texas and Oklahoma is at its lowest level in decades and officials said one sudden burst is not enough to end the drought.

"Any little bit helps, but it's going to take a lot more than one good rain," Gene Acuna, spokesman for Texas Agriculture Commissioner Rick Perry, said Sunday.

Government officials said last week that agricultural losses in Texas alone are already at $2.4 billion and could rise to $6.5 billion, or almost half the state's agricultural economy, if the drought continues.

Officials in Oklahoma are predicting that thousands of farms could fail.